Contents

Meridian

Alice Walker

Context

Character List

Truman Held arrives in Chicokema, Georgia, to meet up with his former lover,
Meridian Hill. He first sees her staring down a manned tank as she escorts local
schoolchildren to a sideshow attraction displaying a mummified woman, on a day the
children, mostly poor and black, are forbidden to attend. After collapsing and being
brought home unconscious, she and Truman catch up. The action then shifts, in a
flashback, to New York City, where, ten years ago, Meridian is unwilling to assert
that she will kill on behalf of a black revolutionary organization, to the dismay of
the others assembled. Then, even further back in time, Meridian, at the age of
thirteen, is unwilling to accept Jesus into her life, a decision that prompts her
mother to withdraw her love. Meridian, back in the present, has decided to return to
her roots as a former civil rights worker, and vows to live and work amongst the
people. Truman does not understand the mysterious illness that grips her, causing
her to experience fainting spells and paralysis. He admits his inability to let her
go.

The action shifts to Saxon College, where Meridian and Anne-Marion first meet.
While canvassing a local neighborhood for voters, Meridian meets the Wild Child, a
pregnant, homeless teenager. Meridian captures her, then bathes and feeds her. When
Meridian makes phone calls to find additional assistance for her, the Wild Child
escapes, runs out into the street, is struck by a car, and dies. Meridian,
Anne-Marion, and other students and neighborhood residents carry the Wild Child’s
casket, leading the funeral cortege onto the campus grounds. But the president of
the college denies them access to the chapel for the services. That night
the students riot and chop down the Sojourner, the school’s iconic
magnolia tree.

In another flashback, Meridian’s father deeds sixty acres of his farmland back
to the Cherokee who once owned it, specifically to Walter Longknife. He camps on the
parcel for a brief period in the summer then cedes ownership back to Meridian’s
father. The area, with its serpent-shaped mound, is then made into a historical site
that bars blacks. Meridian and her father are no longer allowed access to the pit in
the serpent’s tail where they experienced the swooning, paralysis, and strange
manifestations that are part of their unique family condition.

As a teenager, uninformed about sex, Meridian becomes pregnant, marries, and
drops out of school to have the baby boy, who makes her feel indifferent at best.
Around the time her marriage to Eddie is dissolving, Meridian notices the presence
of white civil rights workers in a black neighborhood. Later, the house in which
they are staying is bombed. The incident spurs Meridian to volunteer for the cause.
At the headquarters, she meets Truman. Soon they are demonstrating together and
getting beaten, arrested, and jailed. Meridian’s mother disapproves of Meridian’s
radical political activities. Unexpectedly, Meridian is offered a scholarship to
Saxon College. Her friends attempt to convince her mother that it is a great
opportunity for Meridian. Giving up Eddie Jr., Meridian starts school but is plagued
with the guilt that always dogs her.

Meridian tries her best to battle loneliness and adjust to college life. After
the Wild Child incident, she moves off campus, actively continuing her civil rights
protests and demonstrations. She also falls in love with Truman. The two begin
dating, but their newfound bliss as a couple is compromised by the arrival of
college students—white women—from the North who volunteer to assist the movement.
Many invoke a racial patronage or romantically fetishize the foreign, black culture
that they are fully confronting for the first time. Truman is taken by one of the
new arrivals, Lynne, and the two begin dating. Although Truman and Meridian briefly
resume sexual relations, Truman continues to pursue his budding relationship with
Lynne. Pregnant, Meridian has an abortion and gets her tubes tied. After Lynne
leaves, Truman attempts to rekindle his former love for Meridian, asking her to have
his children. Meridian, in response, strikes him with her bookbag, cutting his
cheek.

With graduation approaching, Meridian again falls ill, losing her sight and
lapsing into unconsciousness. She stays in bed for a month. Miss Winters, one of
Saxon’s few black instructors, nurses her back to health. Anne-Marion, who has also
been at Meridian’s side, eventually concludes that she is incapable of loving
Meridian and turns her back on her friend. Truman and Lynne, now married, are living
in Mississippi, where her whiteness begins to endanger them and the movement when a
fellow rights worker, Tommy Odds, has the lower half of one of his arms shot off.
Increasingly, Lynne is excluded from the marches and meetings. Despite having a
daughter, Camara, Truman grows more and more distant from his wife. He drives to
Alabama to visit Meridian. Newly obsessed with his former lover, he tries to win her
back, but Meridian spurns his advances. After the death of Camara, Lynne visits
Meridian, whose illness has advanced and claimed most of her hair. Lynne is bitter
over the slow dissolve of her marriage and the way her once-idealistic life has
turned out. She has come in search of Truman, whose visits to Meridian have become
more frequent.

The action then shifts, in flashback, to Lynne’s younger years, when she
leaves her family for her new life with Truman and the movement. After the shooting,
Tommy Odds rapes her. He returns with three friends and encourages them to do the
same, but they refuse. Lynne, hysterical, entertains thoughts of leaving and tells
Truman what happened, but he doesn’t believe her. Tommy tells Truman that Lynne is
with him solely to atone for her sins, out of guilt for the racism blacks had
suffered for centuries. Lynne and Truman grow increasingly distant, as Lynne
eventually seduces or succumbs to the sexual advances of his friends and other men
in the community. Eventually, the men tire of her and, pregnant, she moves to New
York and lives on welfare. Truman also moves to New York, where he becomes an
artist. When Lynne comes to his apartment uptown to tell him that Camara has been
attacked by a man and hospitalized, she discovers that he is living with a young
blond woman. After Camara dies, Truman sends for Meridian, who arrives to comfort
him and Lynne. Lynne recalls her impressions of southern Jews and the way they
treated her. She eventually resolves she has no regrets for leaving her past, and
its association with white oppressors, behind.

The novel’s final section opens with the Atlanta funeral cortege of Martin
Luther King, Jr. Eight years later, Meridian struggles with questions of radicalism
and how the movement ultimately turned out. Truman finds it easier to leave such
issues alone. Meridian remains in her small town, advocating for the black residents
to vote and try to change their lot. She recalls the time she took to regularly
attend church services. Once, an old man, whose radical son had been killed while
working for the movement, addressed the congregation. Meridian regained her wavering
desire to kill on behalf of the rights of blacks. She and Truman continue their
voter-registration drives in earnest. Truman tells Lynne he loves her and will
support her as a friend. Truman asks Meridian to love him as she once did. Meridian
readily asserts that she does love him but that her feelings have changed. Cured of
her illness, Meridian prepares to move on, leaving Truman behind to continue the
work that she started in Chicokema. Reading the poems she has posted on the wall,
Truman falls to the floor in a swoon. Upon awakening, he concludes that he must take
up the internal struggle of which Meridian has finally freed herself.